Robot NAO used in therapy: Advanced design and evaluation

Treball de Final de Màster Universitari en Sistemes Intel·ligents. Codi: SIE043. Curs acadèmic 2013-2014Following with the previous work which we have done in the Final Research Project, we introduced a therapeutic application with social robotics to improve the positive mood in patients with fibromyalgia. Different works about therapeutic robotics, positive psychology, emotional intelligence, social learning and mood induction procedures (MIPs) are reviewed. Hardware and software requirements and system development are explained with detail. Conclusions about the clinical utility of these robots are disputed. Nowadays, experiments with real fibromyalgia patients are running, the methodology and procedures which take place in them are described in the future lines section of this work

The Influence of Acute Stress on the Perception of Robot Emotional Body Language: Implications for Robot Design in Healthcare and Other High-Risk Domains

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. July 2017. Major: Human Factors/Ergonomics. Advisors: Kathleen Harder, Wilma Koutstaal. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 131 pages.In coming years, emotionally expressive social robots will permeate many facets of our lives. Yet, although researchers have explored robot design parameters that may facilitate human-robot interaction, remarkably little attention has been paid to the human perceptual and other psychological factors that may impact human ability to engage with robots. In high-risk settings, such as healthcare—where the use of robots is expected to increase markedly—it is paramount to understand the influence of a patient’s stress level, temperament, and attitudes towards robots as negative interactions could harm a patient’s experience and hinder recovery. Using a novel between-subject paradigm, we investigated how the experimental induction of acute physiological and cognitive stress versus low stress influences perception of normed robot emotional body language as conveyed by a physically-present versus virtual reality generated robot. Following high or low stress induction, participants were asked to rate the valence (negative/unhappy to positive/happy) and level of arousal (calm/relaxed to animated/excited) conveyed by poses in five emotional categories: negative valence-high arousal, negative valence-low arousal, neutral, positive valence-low arousal, positive valence-high arousal. Poses from the categories were randomly intermixed and each pose was presented two or three times. Ratings were then correlated with temperament (as assessed by the Adult Temperament Questionnaire), attitudes towards and experience with robots (a new questionnaire that included measures from the Godspeed Scales and Negative Attitudes about Robots Survey), and chronic stress. The acute stress induction especially influenced the evaluation of high arousal poses – both negative and positive – with both valence and arousal rated lower under high than low stress. Repeated presentation impacted perception of low arousal (negative and positive) and neutral poses, with increases in perceived valence and arousal for later presentations. There were also effects of robot type specifically for positively-valenced emotions, such that these poses were rated as more positive for the physically-present than virtually-instantiated robot. Temperament was found to relate to emotional robot body language. Trait positive affect was associated with higher valence ratings for positive and neutral poses. Trait negative affect was correlated with higher arousal ratings for negative valence-low arousal poses. Subcategories within the robot attitudes questionnaire were correlated with emotional robot poses and temperament. To our knowledge this dissertation is the first exploration of the effects of acute and chronic stress on human perception of robot emotional body language, with implications for robot design, both physical and virtual. Given the largely parallel findings that we observed for the poses presented by the physically-present versus virtually-instantiated robot, it is proposed that the use of virtual reality may provide a viable "sandbox" tool for more efficiently and thoroughly experimenting with possible robot designs, and variants in their emotional expressiveness. Broader psychological, physiological, and other factors that designers should consider as they create robots for high-risk applications are also discussed

Social robots as communication partners to support emotional well-being

Interpersonal communication behaviors play a significant role in maintaining emotional well being. Self-disclosure is one such behavior that can have a meaningful impact on our emotional state. When we engage in self-disclosure, we can receive and provide support, improve our mood, and regulate our emotions. It also creates a comfortable space to share our feelings and emotions, which can have a positive impact on our overall mental and physical health. Social robots are gradually being introduced in a range of social and health settings. These autonomous machines can take on various forms and shapes and interact with humans using social behaviors and rules. They are being studied and introduced in psychosocial health interventions, including mental health and rehabilitation settings, to provide much- needed physical and social support to individuals. In my doctoral thesis, I aimed to explore how humans self-disclose and express their emotions to social robots and how this behavior can affect our perception of these agents. By studying speech-based communication interactions between humans and social robots, I wanted to investigate how social robots can support human emotional well-being. While social robots show great promise in offering social support, there are still many questions to consider before deploying them in actual care contexts. It is important to carefully evaluate their utility and scope in interpersonal communication settings, especially since social robots do not yet offer the same opportunities as humans for social interactions. My dissertation consists of three empirical chapters that investigate the underlying psychological mechanisms of perception and behaviour within human–robot communication and their potential deployment as interventions for emotional wellbeing. Chapter 1 offers a comprehensive introduction to the topic of emotional well-being and self-disclosure from a psychological perspective. I begin by providing an overview of the existing literature and theory in this field. Next, I delve into the social perception of social robots, presenting a theoretical framework to help readers understand how people view these machines. To illustrate this, I review some of the latest studies on social robots in care settings, as well as those exploring how robots can encourage people to self-disclose more about themselves. Finally, I explore the key concepts of self disclosure, including how it is defined, operationalized, and measured in experimental psychology and human–robot interaction research. In my first empirical chapter, Chapter 2, I explore how a social robot’s embodiment influences people’s disclosures in measurable terms, and how these disclosures differ from disclosures made to humans and disembodied agents. Chapter 3 studies how prolonged and intensive long-term interactions with a social robot affect people’s self-disclosure behavior towards the robot, perceptions of the robot, and how it affected factors related to well-being. Additionally, I examine the role of the interaction’s discussion theme. In Chapter 4, the final empirical chapter, I test a long-term and intensive social robot intervention with informal caregivers, people living with considerably difficult life situations. I investigate the potential of employing a social robot for eliciting self-disclosure among informal caregivers over time, supporting their emotional well-being, and implicitly encouraging them to adapt emotion regulation skills. In the final discussion chapter, Chapter 5, I summarise the current findings and discuss the contributions, implications and limitations of my work. I reflect on the contribution and challenges of this research approach and provide some future directions for researchers in the relevant fields. The results of these studies provide meaningful evidence for user experience, acceptance, and trust of social robots in different settings, including care, and demonstrate the unique psychological nature of these dynamic social interactions with social robots. Overall, this thesis contributes to the development of social robots that can support emotional well-being through self-disclosure interactions and provide insights into how social robots can be used as mental health interventions for individuals coping with emotional distress

Building Long-Term Human–Robot Relationships: Examining Disclosure, Perception and Well-Being Across Time

While interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, one concern is the extent to which people’s behavioural and emotional engagement might be sustained across time, since during initial interactions with a robot, its novelty is especially salient. This challenge is particularly noteworthy when considering interactions designed to support people’s well-being, with limited evidence (or empirical exploration) of social robots’ capacity to support people’s emotional health over time. Accordingly, our aim here was to examine how long-term repeated interactions with a social robot affect people’s self-disclosure behaviour toward the robot, their perceptions of the robot, and how such sustained interactions influence factors related to well-being. We conducted a mediated long-term online experiment with participants conversing with thesocial robot Pepper 10 times over 5 weeks. We found that people self-disclose increasingly more to a social robot over time, and report the robot to be more social and competent over time. Participants’ moods also improved after talking to the robot, and across sessions, they found the robot’s responses increasingly comforting as well as reported feeling less lonely. Finally, our results emphasize that when the discussion frame was supposedly more emotional (in this case, framing questions in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic), participants reported feeling lonelier and more stressed. These results set the stage forsituating social robots as conversational partners and provide crucial evidence for their potential inclusion in interventions supporting people’s emotional health through encouraging self-disclosure

EMOTIONAL SYNCHRONIZATION-BASED HUMAN-ROBOT COMMUNICATION AND ITS EFFECTS

This paper presents a natural and comfortable communication system between human and robot based on synchronization to human emotional state using human facial expression recognition. The system consists of three parts: human emotion recognition, robotic emotion generation, and robotic emotion expression. The robot recognizes human emotion through human facial expressions, and robotic emotion is generated and synchronized with human emotion dynamically using a vector field of dynamics. The robot makes dynamically varying facial expressions to express its own emotions to the human. A communication experiment was conducted to examine the effectiveness of the proposed system. The authors found that subjects became much more comfortable after communicating with the robot with synchronized emotions. Subjects felt somewhat uncomfortable after communicating with the robot with non-synchronized emotions. During emotional synchronization, subjects communicated much more with the robot, and the communication time was double that during non-synchronization. Furthermore, in the case of emotional synchronization, subjects had good impressions of the robot, much better than the impressions in the case of non-synchronization. It was confirmed in this study that emotional synchronization in human-robot communication can be effective in making humans comfortable and makes the robot much more favorable and acceptable to humans.ArticleINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMANOID ROBOTICS. 10(1):1350014 (2013)journal articl

The Potential use of Social Robots in Acute Paediatric Settings: A mixed-methods exploration of feasibility, acceptance, and utility.

The hospital can be an anxious place for paediatric patients. Reducing and managing anxiety in children is important; finding tools and interventions to support this is essential to the healthcare of paediatric patients. Social robots offer a new way of interacting with children and have the potential to reduce negative emotions. Even though research has found that social robots could potentially be an anxiety-preventing tool, there is no research exploring how children play in hospital settings and which features are required for social robots to impact paediatric patients positively. There are also gaps regarding parents of paediatric patients' and healthcare professionals' views on social robots and how they feel about using them as a tool within a hospital setting. This thesis examined the feasibility of using social robots in four hospital settings to address this gap. Observations of paediatric patients revealed the importance of tactile play and games with rules as popular forms of interaction with social robots. Questionnaires and interviews gathered feedback from paediatric patients, parents, and healthcare professionals. Overall, the response to social robots was positive, with parents and healthcare professionals acknowledging their potential benefits in reducing anxiety. However, some paediatric patients did not find the social robot relaxing, and there were mixed opinions on its anxiety-reducing capabilities. While parents noticed a change in their children's negative moods and enjoyed the interaction, a few were uncertain about anxiety reduction. Healthcare professionals expressed excitement about social robots but sought further clarity on their practical implementation in a hospital setting. Despite the promising aspects, this thesis highlights the need for further research and development. Large-scale comparisons of social robots in diverse hospital settings and longitudinal studies with paediatric patients are warranted to gain deeper insights and enhance the practicality of using social robots as anxiety-reducing tools in paediatric care

A contribution to the incorporation of sociability and creativity skills to computers and robots

This dissertation contains the research and work completed by the PhD candidate on the incorporation of sociability and creativity skills to computers and robots. Both skills can be directly related with empathy, which is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In this form, this research can be contextualized in the framework of recent developments towards the achievement of empathy machines. The first challenge at hands refers to designing pioneering techniques based on the use of social robots to improve user experience interacting with them. In particular, research focus is on eliminating or minimizing pain and anxiety as well as loneliness and stress of long-term hospitalized child patients. This challenge is approached by developing a cloud-based robotics architecture to effectively develop complex tasks related to hospitalized children assistance. More specifically, a multiagent learning system is introduced based on a combination of machine learning and cloud computing using low-cost robots (Innvo labs's Pleo rb). Moreover, a wireless communication system is also developed for the Pleo robot in order to help the health professional who conducts therapy with the child, monitoring, understanding, and controlling Pleo behavior at any moment. As a second challenge, a new formulation of the concept of creativity is proposed in order to empower computers with. Based on previous well established theories from Boden and Wiggins, this thesis redefines the formal mechanism of exploratory and transformational creativity in a way which facilitates the computational implementation of these mechanisms in Creativity Support Systems. The proposed formalization is applied and validated on two real cases: the first, about chocolate designing, in which a novel and flavorful combination of chocolate and fruit is generated. The second case is about the composition of a single voice tune of reel using ABC notation.Postprint (published version